... Of all the “shouts” ["El Grito", "The Shout" given by the President to commemorate the initial call to rebellion by Father Miguel Hidalgo in Dolores, Guanajuato on Sept. 15, 1810] we Mexicans have heard, in recent years... without a doubt, this one will be the most painful of all. More than a Shout, it will be like a howl, a shriek, and a scream. It will be like a roar, a cry, a shout at the top of our lungs.
As far as I'm concerned, I want to shout, but to shout pure curses. I have never before felt such an urgency to go to Zócalo to shout, along with thousands of my compatriots, about the disappearance of the 43 students, to shout about the disappearance of justice and the disappearance of legality in our institutions. Maybe, screaming at the top of our lungs, in unison with so many people, will let out my feelings of helplessness and frustration towards this government. I wonder if any Mexicans feel the same way I do; especially those who have accumulated many Shouts of the so-called patriots.
MV Note: The celebration of Mexican Independence begins on the night of September 15 with "El Grito". The primary "Grito" is given by the President from the balcony of the National Palace, facing the Zócalo, the central plaza of Mexico City and the symbolic center of the country. Names of Mexican heroes are called out and the crowd answers, "¡Viva!", "Long live!" Other "Gritos" are led by governors and mayors across the country.To sound more sincere and with the times in which we are living, why don’t they change the litany and instead of “long lives” for the country's heroes, Enrique Peña Nieto shouts something like, "Long live corruption!”, “Long live impunity!", "Long live State crime!", "Long live government lies!", "Long live El Chapo for his courage!", "Long live the white house!", "Long live the collapse of the 'historical truth'!", and "Long live the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students!” I write this with a lump in my throat; the same one that has been stuck there for many weeks. I write this with fury and much anger. I write this with sorrow and total hopelessness. Of course, maybe it's due to age, there is a strange fatigue, or simply, because I am sad.
When a country is ruled with a lack of credibility in the government, given the exasperation and despair, it is evident that all kinds of rumors erupt. That the president is very sick, that his marriage is falling apart, that the peso will never recover, that the oil price will continue decreasing day by day, that the government knows where El Chapo is, that the mass murder in Narvarte [of photojournalist Rubén Espinosa and four women] has nothing to do with an assault, that nobody wants the members of PRI, that behind the OHL [Spanish] construction company scandal is a very powerful politician and that the Iguala students were not incinerated in the Cocula garbage dump, but rather in a crematorium of a funeral home or hospital or, simply, one of the Army’s.
Rumors, rumor and more rumors… Mexicans live on them...
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*María Guadalupe Loaeza Tovar is a contemporary Mexican writer and author of many books, including Las Niñas Bien [The Good Girls], Las Reinas de Polanco [The Queens of Polanco (wealthy Mexico City neighborhood], Debo, Luego Sufro [I Owe, Therefore, I Suffer] and Compro, Luego Existo [I Shop, Therefore, I Exist], in which she writes ironically about the Mexican upper class. Twitter: @gloaeza